Category: Countries

I’ve spent my whole life getting lost – I have a terrible sense of direction and never know where I am on a map – so it’s very refreshing to be living in a town where everyone else is also permanently lost. It’s not difficult to get lost in Siem Reap – even if you… Continue reading Not lost in translation, just lost

Cambodia’s not the country for a lie-in.  This morning I was woken by the wedding music – getting used to that – and by a gecko who sounded so close that I was convinced he was about to jump into bed with me.  If you’ve never heard a gecko, they make the strangest sound, which… Continue reading Maths and English, enlivened by a green bun

I nipped out this morning to collect my laundry ($1 a kilo, washed and ironed) and on my return saw a monk standing silently outside the entrance to the guest house.  I was very taken by his robes with perfectly co-ordinating umbrella, but didn’t like to photograph him face on, so I followed him to… Continue reading Stalking a monk and gatecrashing a wedding

A couple of months ago I watched a programme where the sprightly septuagenarian Angela Rippon skipped around the world looking for the secret of eternal youth.  She found it on an island in Japan, where the average age of the inhabitants is about 150, and the secret ingredient in their diet is the purple sweet… Continue reading The purple Pringle

On Monday mornings the children all have to pick up the litter from around the school site.  The two different groups – the morning and the afternoon groups – each do it twice a week, and it really needs doing because Cambodia seems to be covered in plastic.  There are empty drinks bottles and old… Continue reading Computers, geography and rain

I have had a very strange, kafka-esque sort of day, involving both a strange awakening and insects. I woke up this morning to discover that I had developed a full-blown male mid-life crisis (mediatas limen discrimine) and was desperate to book myself on a motorbike tour – ok, a vespa tour – of the night… Continue reading In which I am struck down with mediatas limen discrimine

School is morning or afternoon only, so in theory there’s no need to serve school lunch, but there are about twenty children at school who wouldn’t get any lunch if they went home, so there are two school cooks who make lunch for them every day. They have a sort of stew with rice, and… Continue reading School lunch

My day started at 5 am today, with very loud, tinny, tuneless music playing somewhere nearby.  As it was still going on two hours later, I asked the staff at breakfast what it was.  They told me that for any type of special ceremony such as a wedding or a funeral the music is played… Continue reading Next, the Games Teacher …

Why did I ever think it was difficult to be an art teacher?  The answer to that is obviously propaganda and misinformation from currently-employed art teachers who don’t want the rest of us to find out what a doddle it is. I turned up this morning in some trepidation for my first art class, consoling… Continue reading The art lesson

I spent my first day observing at Grace House.  The first rule is: always remove your shoes before entering a room … including a classroom: This is the easiest thing in the world to forget if , like me, you’ve spent a lifetime walking into rooms without giving your footwear a second thought.  I keep… Continue reading Grace House

I went down to breakfast this morning and noticed signs all over the guest house asking guests to be quiet, which seems a not unreasonable request, but also banning hedgehogs, which was frankly baffling and got me wondering whether the locals have a habit of smuggling hedgehogs into hotels: When I asked about this I… Continue reading Discrimination against hedgehogs

I’ve always known that there are three steps to heaven, but I hadn’t realised before today that British Airways was quite so closely involved. I turned up at Heathrow with an extra suitcase full of all the toys and other materials donated by friends and colleagues for the children’s project in Cambodia, quite prepared to… Continue reading The British Airways hotline to heaven

I received the instructions this week from the community project school where I will be volunteering as a teacher.  I have learnt that the Khmer culture requires modesty, and in addition teachers are highly respected in Cambodia, and must dress in an appropriately dignified way – and in particular must not display shoulders, knees or… Continue reading The Cambodian Teacher’s Wardrobe Dilemma

The last time I did any maths was a GCSE in 1991- and I mean real maths, not splitting a bill, checking my change or counting children on school trips.  But even these things are done using my own idiosyncratic method and I don’t show my working.  So I probably wouldn’t get any marks for… Continue reading Getting to grips with maths

Last summer I decided to take a course to learn to teach English as a foreign language.  One year on, despite passing with flying colours, I still haven’t found an opportunity to use my new-found skill.  So, with ‘use it or lose it’ firmly in my mind, I have arranged to spend seven weeks in… Continue reading Cambodian Research